"I followed the debate about a successor for the C/C++ combination as the primary language for developing the GNOME core desktop platform very closely last month. There has been discussion about a number of options. What I would like to do on this page is give an overview how a probably less well-known language might be a viable compromise as a C/C++ successor. This language is called Eiffel and exists for over a decade. Eiffel takes the principle of Object-Oriented programming to its extremes and, as a consequence, is a very easy to learn language."

...for the disease. I mean I don't think that a new language would alone solve Gnome's problems. I also don't think taking a debate longer than humanly reasonable over a new language would help Gnome either. And also, I don't think Eiffel would be able to solve any of Gnome's problems.

I don't want to get into any professional or religious wars about c/c++/java/c#/py/ry/whatever else. I know a lot of them, I like a lot of them, I dislike some of them. Any of them could be use to build a DE like Gnome or anything better or worse than Gnome. I don't think it's the language choice that could/would make Gnome any better or worse. It's the people, it's the development method, it's a usable (yes, in my dreams) api, fully implemented bindings to several other languages, it's a usable integrated RAD environment (yes, i wish), better QA, and the ability of better attention to the other side - the latter meaning the KDE team has long long ago implemented some features that are so freaking good, it's silly not to mimic them just because some freaking philosophical guidelines.

And please hunt those damn Gnome app memory issues down for once cause they can be a real pain in the ass (think evolution, then think a dozen other places). And this also doesn't have anythng to do with the "officially" chosen Gnome dev. language.

If you really want to make developers happy, choose something like http://shakespearelang.sourceforge.net/ I personally wouldn't want to contribute to a project with developers who write dozens of memleaking apps, lag behind with dozens of user/power user apps (doesn't matter if it's philosophically justified or not) and in the middle of development start arguing over the choice of a new development language. My 0.02.